ITC is noted for its wealth and breadth of technical sessions, and this year's event was no exception. There were 35 sessions covering many aspects of test starting out with Session 1 on “Dealing With Outliers and Variation in Today's ICs” to “Scan-Based Compression and Transition Tests” in Session 35.
Attendance was down—1,480 compared to 1,649 for 2007. It is well to note that the attendance for 2007 actually was up almost 4% over 2006. Most people I spoke with on the exhibition floor readily blamed the economy as the reason for the lower turnout at this year's event.
The big news at the convention didn't come from the exhibition hall or from any of the technical sessions but in a meeting open to the public and hosted by test and semiconductor companies. The panelists at the meeting represented not just any businesses, but leading ATE manufacturers including Advantest, LTX-Credence, Roos Instruments, Teradyne, and Verigy as well as the major semiconductor suppliers Amkor, Infineon, Intel, and Qualcomm. It was quite an unusual gathering of competitors interacting in a seemingly congenial manner and actively proclaiming a cooperative environment to achieve a common goal.
As stated in the press release issued at ITC, the goal is to foster pre-competitive collaboration and standards development to improve semiconductor industry productivity. To that end, an organization has been created called Collaborative Alliance for Semiconductor Test (CAST) initially supported by the aforementioned companies. CAST hopes to attract a plethora of industry players from test equipment suppliers, integrated device manufacturers, and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test companies to help ensure the success of the alliance.
As with any organization, CAST has published a set of objectives:
• Foster pre-competitive collaboration with emphasis on manufacturing process cost, efficiency, and yield, beginning with wafer test and ending with shipment to the customer.
• Research, develop, and promote standards that enable industry productivity improvement.
• Define and measure benchmark criteria for quantifying end-user process efficiency and effectiveness and identify opportunities to improve that efficiency via collaborative efforts.
• Act as a representative and an advocate for the members with a focus on fostering a better understanding of their strategic value to the semiconductor industry.
The key word stated in the objectives, especially important to ATE companies, is pre-competitive. Test equipment manufacturers still can design the best system in any configuration they so desire for their market and customers and not be constrained by CAST rules and regulations. CAST's goal is to standardize the interface between the tester and the device including electrical and mechanical requirements as well as data presentation. Test systems from the various manufacturers will be as unique and different as they are now; they just will interface and communicate in a standard way to other entities in the process.
One of the panelists alluded to the major reason for creating CAST—it's the economy. With the outlook for the semiconductor industry not looking promising for the foreseeable term, it makes sense to take some drastic measures. Aligning with your competitors might help the industry move forward in tough economic times. We shall see. Stay tuned.
Paul Milo
Editorial Director
[email protected]